7 hours ago, Rocky said:

its how you answer them though cheese.. and we have a habit of bull****ting. just be honest. 'yeah, we kinda sucked last year.. hope we are better this year, but probably won't be..'. THAT i could get around!

I agree that it would be nice if we received a completely honest appraisal but our club isn't unique.

All the players from all the clubs are media trained and the messaging is designed with the intention of helping protect/motivate players, to give them the best chance to perform. 

It seemingly works for the team's that win and is a perceived disaster for teams that lose but it's the same strategy - listen to any pre or post-match interview from any player in the league - it's the same cookie-cutter answers.

6 hours ago, Cheesy D. Pun said:

I agree that it would be nice if we received a completely honest appraisal but our club isn't unique.

All the players from all the clubs are media trained and the messaging is designed with the intention of helping protect/motivate players, to give them the best chance to perform. 

It seemingly works for the team's that win and is a perceived disaster for teams that lose but it's the same strategy - listen to any pre or post-match interview from any player in the league - it's the same cookie-cutter answers.

Yep and every club talks about "learnings" too which was evident watching the Marking Their Mark doco on Amazon

20 hours ago, Lucifer's Hero said:

And hopefully when she hangs up the boots she gets a gig as an Assistant Coach for our men's team.

She is very smart tactically, game plans and how to neutralise opp strengths.

Not sure our current club leaders value her as much as the PJ regime did.

My focus was on her playing impact, but you raise a good point post career LH

Its emabarrassing how superior she is in analysis and insight when working on the Ch 7 commentary team to the ' bozo former champs '  of the game that station employs.

On 3/11/2021 at 1:52 PM, John Crow Batty said:

Well if they as angry as the supporters then the 2021 premiership is ours. I hope there no longer is a disconnect.

Gawn: Anger driving Dees after finals near miss

And ours it is JCB!!

Now that the imeediate excitement of winning the GF has 'slightly' subdued and I'm in a reflective and retrospective mood, I thought it was a good opportunity to give this thread a bump and for people to revisit the article.

https://www.theage.com.au/sport/afl/gawn-anger-driving-dees-after-finals-near-miss-20210310-p579gj.html

At the time I thought my fellow Demonland posters comments were off the mark, although I can understand their sentiment after years of promises, slogans and statements from our leaders that were never delivered on. The title of the article/thread was click bate at its best and I think the actual content was more reflective, humble, honest and of substance than the meaningless 'play angry' headline.  In particular I thought the following quotes from Max regarding our 2020 season resonate pretty well retrospectively with the our grand final performance and the way we played throughout the season in general:

“We obviously wanted to play finals. We thought we were good enough at the time. But then a reality check in Cairns showed us that we weren’t, we were a little bit off,” he said.

“And we’ve touched on that as a playing group coming back, what we think we need to improve on. Our defenders were top four rated in the AFL but everywhere else was relatively low. So the mids and forwards have got together and we want to create something that hopefully is as good as our defensive group, and that could take us to the pointy end. This coaching group’s got a game plan that the players think is going to take us, hopefully to the pointy end of September.”


I also think Max's comments on Lumumba reflect pretty well on the inclusive approachable style of his personality leadership wise. 

On a slightly different note, I also think it's interesting to reflect just how lucky we were how things played out with injury and the integrity of Max's body, recalling that the main reason we listed Daw was as backup for Max, particularly since he had strained one of his knees again preseason.  I think this speaks volumes of both Max's professionalism to his recovery, but particularly how lucky we were to have Darren Burgess this year in particular.  Gee I hope our other fitness staff have been good enough understudies to the Burgess method and knowledge that they can carry on his good work in the years ahead.  Would also really like to see Majak get a senior game or two for us at some point next season, as I feel he's earnt that and there's another great story to be written.

I just love the sentiment from Max in this article and the other stories that have been published about how the players critically reviewed where we were at as team over the off season, what needed to change and the collective buy-in that followed.  It reminded me of the sort of honest review that the great 2007 Cats team had committed to, knowing the result of that.  Over the course of the season seeing guys like Trac, Clarry and others buy in and sign on for future years (assumedly at the expense of chasing bigger coin and the lure of other 'successful' teams) it also reminded me of the Cats 2007 ethos of individual sacrifice for team sucess.

On 3/14/2021 at 11:54 PM, Youngwilliam said:

We are the new Richmond Tigers. We'll finish 9th again.

Close.